Church Buildings and the Community

Richard Chartres

Richard Chartres Bishop of London and Simon Thurley Chief Executive of English Heritage at the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Paddington (Photo: Michael Walter, Troika)

The Church of England has
responsibility for 16,200 churches of
which over 12,000 are listed. In all,
there are 14,500 listed places of worship in
England, and 45 per cent of all Grade I buildings
are places of worship. As Dr Simon Thurley,
Chief Executive of English Heritage has said,
‘The parish churches of England are some
of the most sparkling jewels in the precious
crown that is our historic environment’.

However, the cost of maintaining and
repairing these buildings can be overwhelming.
Research undertaken by English Heritage in
collaboration with the Church of England
estimated that necessary repairs to all listed
places of worship are valued at £925 million over
the next five years, or £185 million a year.(1)

WHAT IS ACTUALLY BEING SPENT?

Annual figures collected by the Church of
England reveal that £112 million is currently
being spent on repairs to parish churches.
Public grants together with some independent
trusts provide less than £40 million per year
for repairs, which leaves a current annual
shortfall of £72 million per year, or nearly 65 per
cent, which is raised by the congregations.

Contrary to what many people still believe,
the responsibility for maintaining church
buildings and keeping them in repair lies
with each individual church: the incumbent
and the parochial church council. There is
no guaranteed state funding for churches’
care or maintenance nor does the Church
itself have central funds to put towards these
buildings. As I have said before, the Church
of England is, in financial terms, the most
disestablished church in Western Europe.
Across the continent churches are facing huge
repair bills, and many other European countries
support church organisations through public
funds in various ways. Some countries take
on financial responsibility for repairs, some
grant compensation for ‘heritage costs’, others
continue to levy a church tax on the population.
There is, in this country, an asymmetrical
funding relationship between Church and State.

SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

Because the emphasis has often been on ‘heritage’, as if church buildings belonged to
the past, the assumption has been that any
money, public or otherwise, spent on them
is simply to preserve their antiquarian value.
But these buildings are much more than a
collection of grand historical set pieces, with
no relevance to the lives of ordinary people.

The Church accepts that it has a
duty to care for what we have inherited
but also to develop the potential of these
buildings to do what they were intended
to do as servants of the whole community
as well as places for the worship of God.

The idea of a church being a vital resource
for the whole community is not a new one.
Until the building of community and village
halls, churches were the only buildings large
enough to host community events. Records
show that the parish church hosted meetings,
debates, elections and legal proceedings,
as well as festivities. It could also house the
library and the local school, store any firefighting
equipment, act as the local armoury,
afford space for the stocks as well as at times
being used as the jail and as a night shelter.
In some cases, it even provided space for
a gaming room, and records show that in
some cockfighting took place until 1849.

Many today are continuing to play a
significant role as venues for a range of social
and community activities and as centres of
education and tourism. National surveys
in 2003 and 2005 found that 86 per cent of
individuals surveyed had been inside a church
building within the previous 12 monthsfor a range of different reasons including
funerals and weddings, but also for cultural
and community events.(2) In 2005, 38 per cent
said they had visited due to a social and
community event and 23 per cent had gone in
to find a quiet space. The same survey found
that 72 per cent agreed with the statement, ‘places of worship provide valuable social and
community facilities’. Among respondents
who claimed no religious allegiance,
46 per cent agreed with this statement.

Churches can be part of the solution to
a range of problems from providing a safe
space for people to gather after a disaster – the
flooding in the summer of 2007 being the most
recent example – to longer term problems
like addressing loneliness and deprivation in
an ageing population, and the need for the
provision of community support and services
in deprived urban areas and scattered rural
areas where most other institutions such as
schools, shop, pubs and post offices have already
left. Alongside the Methodist Church and
the United Reformed Church, we have been
developing national guidelines with Post Office
Ltd that will help where a church is considering
hosting an outreach post office. These
guidelines cover requirements, procedures
and good working practice for both the
church and the post office on what is involved.
We hope that this partnership will pave the
way for other similar national initiatives.

In the last few years, surveys mapping the
size and range of this contribution have been
undertaken in all nine English regions. Most
of these surveys have been undertaken by
the regional faith network supported by their
regional development agency or government
office, or in some cases their local authority.

A 2005 study of the economic impact of
faith communities in the North West estimated
that they contributed over £90 million a
year. This includes: the estimated economic
value of 45,667 faith volunteers contributing
over eight million hours of social and health
care, and working in regeneration initiatives
(equivalent to 4,815 full time jobs at a wage rate
of £7.50 per hour); premises made available
by faith groups for use of local community
groups; and day visitor expenditure generated
by faith tourism which also supported
the equivalent of 215 full time jobs.(3)

In 2006, across the four local authority
areas of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, and
Wolverhampton, over 21,000 people from faith
communities were actively working in their
community as paid staff or volunteers, the
latter contributing a total of 1.3m volunteers’
hours per year. As a result of their work,
57,000 young people were attending more
than 2,000 youth activities. This contribution
is estimated to be an investment of over £32 million a year in people resources.(4)

St Leonard's, Bilston is at the heart of an urban community, not only as a place of worship and an architectural landmark but also through providing office accommodation
for the Senior Citizen's Link line (above left) and as a quiet meeting place for coffee.

In all of this, buildings make a significant
contribution: a 2004 survey in the South East
found that on average at least two projects of
social action were carried out from the premises
of each faith building in the region.(5) A 2006
survey across the West Midlands found that
over 80 per cent of faith groups own buildings.
Almost 90 per cent of respondents allow the
wider community to use their buildings.(6)

Community use of churches ranges from
provision of support services for various
groups such as the elderly, and the homeless
through to setting up community cafés, hosting
concerts and exhibitions, providing venues
for civic events, adult education, IT training,
after-schools clubs and increasingly to help
deliver essential services such as post offices,
community shops and doctors’ surgeries, and
police stations.

St Leonard’s Church, Bilston, is a Grade II
church in a town hit badly by the closure of
nearby heavy industry. In 1995 the congregation
researched the needs of the local community and
found that the needs of vulnerable local older
people were not being met. Senior Citizens Link
Line, which the church now hosts, is a support
service that phones 1,500 elderly people every
week. It employs seven staff and more than
40 volunteers supported by National Lottery
funding. It is now extending its service to the Wolverhampton and Bradford areas and the
Primary Care Trust now wishes to make use of it.

And yet, in so many ways, the potential
of churches as a community resource and
as part of schemes for social regeneration is
underdeveloped.

In October 2004, the Church of England
published Building Faith in our Future in
order to awaken greater understanding of
the contribution of church buildings.(7) The
sustainability of this activity and of the buildings
which enable it to take place, depends on the
effort and commitment of the local volunteers
who maintain them. All this activity is vulnerable
without further help. The Building Faith
Campaign is seeking a more realistic direct
partnership between the Church and both
central and local government and the public
sector for the care and maintenance of church
buildings in the interests of the nation as a
whole. We would like to agree a new financial
settlement which reflects the value and potential
of these community assets.

A playgroup in the nave of St Faith’s, Hexton: services are now held in the chancel.

WHAT WE HAVE TO OFFER

The Church of England by its presence
everywhere is uniquely placed to contribute. Of
the 16,200 parish churches, over 9,600 (60%)
are in rural areas.(8) This is more than the number
of post office branches, which currently stands
at around 14,600 in the UK, 55 per cent of
which are rural.(9) Furthermore, the incumbent,
the congregation and the church volunteers
actually live in their communities. Churches
are used to working with volunteers and have
large buildings to offer. We are not simply
asking for money for buildings, but saying that
greater support will help keep these buildings
in good repair, improve what they can offer to
their local communities and thus would unlock
a major resource for the nation as a whole.

WHAT ARE WE ASKING FOR?

Recognition that maintaining these
buildings is expensive because of their
(rightful) heritage importance. We are
currently suggesting 50 per cent of the cost
of repairs should be provided by the State.

Recognition that maintenance, if
routinely carried out, can avoid huge repair
bills in the future. Several dioceses including
London Diocese are exploring providing
centralised maintenance schemes for their
churches. Supported by Heritage Lottery Fund,
English Heritage and the Council for the Care of
Churches, SPAB’s Faith in Maintenance project,
which started this year, aims to provide 30 free
training courses for over 6,000 volunteers
in England and Wales who help to maintain
our historic places of worship. This needs to
continue beyond the three years set for the
project and we need a long term funding scheme
to help churches pay for the actual work.

Recognition that many of these buildings
cannot become full community assets
without expensive alterations. Places of
worship usually lack essential facilities such
as lavatories and kitchens. Because they are
historic buildings, adapting them requires
careful design and implementation and the work
is often expensive. A 2005 survey of Church
of England churches has revealed that some
44 per cent of churches now have toilets and
some 37 per cent have kitchen facilities.(10) This
is good news – a church with such facilities
immediately has so much more to offer as a
resource – but there is still a long way to go.

The inclusion of churches in all national,
regional and local strategic policies. Whether
it’s about regeneration of urban areas or how
best to deliver vital services to rural areas, the
role of churches must be considered strategically.

A level-playing field in relation to other
funding. Most faith groups are very clear
about the difference between funding their own
faith activities and funding activities which
support the wider community. It’s a shame
that some funding bodies are not so clear.

WHAT WE ARE DOING

We believe that the Church’s contribution
to the community in so many ways justifies
greater government funding and we are
taking this forward with them in discussion.

But we recognise that the churches
themselves must do more to become more
professional in their requests for funding.
Congregations are sometimes unfamiliar
with the jargon and also lack the skills to be
able to capture and articulate all the benefits
arising out of their projects. Faith groups are
more likely to talk of ‘well-being’ rather than
economic benefits. Within dioceses and at the
centre we are already working with a range
of existing organisations, both private and
charitable, to address this issue of capacity
and to put in place training to help churches
make more professional grant applications.

The ChurchCare website (www.churchcare.co.uk), which was developed by the Church
of England in 2001 in partnership with the
Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, is a ‘one-stop shop’
resource for anyone involved in the
running of a church building. The site covers
a range of topics related to maintenance,
fundraising and finance, legal matters, security
and insurance. Currently being updated for a
relaunch in the autumn, new sections are being
added on the repair, extension and alteration
of church buildings, and the development of
the building as a community resource. All of
these will take the user through the stages
involved, such as for undertaking major repair
projects, and for developing and managing
community projects, signposting at each stage
useful links to sources of expertise and advice.

By using these buildings to their full
potential as a real resource for their local
communities, this will in turn help sustain
them. While as we know not all these activities will produce funds, and indeed this is not
their first objective, every time someone
from the wider community enters a church
building and they gain something worthwhile,
it will encourage them to value it and to
want to take a share of the responsibility for
it. If nothing else it can mean that they get
used to being in ‘a church’ comfortably.

At the very least, the church building
itself benefits from more frequent use, regular
heating and additional funds and volunteers
and being valued more by its community.

We are continuing to encourage churches
to open. Statistics show that open churches are
safer from thieves and vandals than locked ones.
The results of a 2005 survey indicate that half the
Church of England’s churches are now open for
more than ten hours a week and many for longer,
while only 20 per cent are always closed to casual
visitors outside service times.(11) The number of
visitors to parish churches each year, while more
difficult to quantify, has been estimated to be at
least 10m visits, and may be as many as 50m.(12)

St Thomas’s, Stanley Crook, Durham,
is a Grade II church where the closure of
the mine has left a small community of high
unemployment. Regularly considered for
closure, the church survived due largely to the
will of the community. A millennium project
converted the west end of the nave to provide
two-storey accommodation with a gallery at
first floor level, a meeting area on ground floor
with adjacent kitchen and toilet facilities. There
is now a coffee drop-in, a charity shop and a
library for mums and toddlers. Links have been
made with the arts department of Sunderland
University to encourage young artists to use
the gallery as an exhibition space. Exhibitors
are now also being attracted from across
Europe. It has helped to rebuild a community;
leaders have emerged from a community that
has suffered greatly from unemployment.

St Faith’s, Hexton, Diocese of St Albans,
is a Grade II* church which was facing the
possibility of redundancy. By using the chancel
for worship and opening up the nave to the
community, it has turned itself around. The pews
have been taken out, a wooden floor put in and
a kitchen and toilet installed at the base of the
tower. The local primary school uses it as their
hall. It also provides a venue for a playgroup,
youth group, other community groups, IT
learning, festivals and other events. It was a
finalist in the 2005 Ecclesiastical Insurance
Group competition, and was commended by the
organisers: ‘The changes and improvements St
Faith’s has made make it not only the physical
centre of the village but also the spiritual
and social centre of the community too'.

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?

Sir Roy Strong, in A Little History of the
English Country Church (Jonathan Cape 2007)
advocates giving the 'church building back to
the local community, albeit with safeguards for
worship…. Change has been the life-blood of the
country church through the ages. Adaptation
will be more important than preservation'. We
welcome this. One of the great steps forward
in the last few years is the stronger recognition
throughout the conservation world that over
insistence on ‘preservation’ may fossilise
the very thing they wish to retain. Sensitive
adaptation, underpinned by understanding
of the building, must be the way forward.

We are aware that there is a problem in
that most churches are in less populated
areas. The distribution of listed parish churches
is heavily biased towards sparsely populated
parts of the country. 49 per cent of
all listed parish churches, and 61 per cent of
Grade I parish churches are located in the
East Midlands, the East of England and the
West Country, which contain only 26 per
cent of the population.(13) Obviously parishes
and dioceses need to think strategically about
their own mission and future. Advice on this
has been produced and many churches and
dioceses are taking this very seriously.

We have also seen a much richer
co-operation between the many bodies,
organisations and people who appreciate
and love church buildings – for their sense
of the presence of God, for their beauty,
and because of what they enable the
community to do. We need those supporters
to rally to support this campaign.

~~~

Notes(1) Section 5.6, Places of Worship Fabric Needs
Survey 2005, a report for English Heritage
and the Council for the Care of Churches by Michael Wingate, published May 2006; available from the English Heritage website:
www.english-heritage.org.uk/inspired(2) Opinion Research Business (ORB), Annual
Religious Survey of Affiliation and Practice
including Perceptions of the Role of Local
Churches/Chapels, on behalf of the Church
of England and English Heritage, Oct 2003
and Nov 2005(3) DTZ Pieda Consulting, Faith in England’s
Northwest: Economic Impact Assessment,
produced on behalf of the Northwest
Regional Development Agency and the
Churches’ Officer for the Northwest,
Feb 2005(4) Faith in the Black Country: the role of faith
groups in community transformation,
commissioned by the Black Country Net,
with funding from the Home Office’s Faith
Communities Capacity Building fund and
Equal (Black Country in the Lead): study
conducted by Transformations Community
Projects Partnership, 2007(5)Beyond Belief?: a research report from
the South East England Faith Forum,
March 2004, jointly funded by SEEDA and
churches in the South East with support
from RAISE and SEERA(6)Believing in the Region: a baseline study
of faith bodies across the West Midlands,
May 2006. West Midlands Faith Forum
mapping study on contribution of Faith
Groups in the West Midlands undertaken
by Regional Action West Midlands (RAWN)
with funding from the Government Office
West Midlands(7) Church Heritage Forum, Building Faith in
our Future, Church House Publishing, 2004(8) Government Rural and Urban Area
Classifications 2004(9) Postcomm 5th Annual Report 2004-5(10) Church Statistics collected by the Research
and Statistics Department, Church of
England, 2005(11) Church Statistics collected by the Research
and Statistics Department, Church of
England, 2005(12) Trevor Cooper, How do we keep our Parish
Churches? Ecclesiological Society 2004(13)'Insights’ Tourism Intelligence Papers,
Volume 12(A13) (English Tourism
St Thomas's, Stanley Crook: (left) sculpture by Kim Neashan, (right) painting by Katherine Henery Council 2000), pp43-52